Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Inspired by a recent post on cooper.com about the Amber Alert text capabilities in California and New York, I became interested in the Alertus ENS beacons that have now been installed on campus at the University of Regina.

All is well at 9:52 AM!

The display permits a message of 20 characters on each of 4 lines, so a total of 80 characters are visible at once. It is not clear the maximum number of screens a single message can occupy. There is a potential hazard of inopportune breaks between screens of a message (I recall having taken a picture of one such multi-screen messages, but the photo is nowhere to be found) and a lack of standard start and end characters for messages.

The beacons are intended to warn about life threatening emergencies such as Tornados, Chemical Spills or Armed Intruders. They will not activate/sound during a fire alarm.

There are 2 programmable (according to website) buttons on the beacon, the functions of which is unclear from examining the beacon. It seems that the beacons are only meant to transmit information and not receive any reports of problems. Riding on the Toronto Subway recently, I noticed a passenger assistance alarm (a thin yellow strip in each car). The penalty for improper activation is a $425 ticket.
Could an emergency reporting capability, with a similar deterrent for misuse, be workable at the University of Regina?

The beacons provide a visual notification capability that the fire alarm system does not have, but the ENS beacons are not used during fires. Could the use of both systems add to the confusion in case of a fire? If the fire alarm system was used for other emergencies as well, could that create a different sort of confusion? Could it be a problem that the beacons take people out of classrooms to find out the nature of the emergency?

Alertus has desktop software that allows campus computers to receive emergency notifications. I have installed it on my computer, but is this software installed on all (smart) classroom computers? Getting back to the Amber Alert post on cooper.com, should an emergency notifcation systems also include mobile devices (non-desktop)? Should students register their cellphones to receive these messages on their phones?

It seems that these sorts of systems have come about recently in response to various tragedies in the States. There seem to be a few different approaches to emergency notification. Other alternatives I've found include e2campus and rave.

This discussion makes me wonder about the history of the development of current fire alarm systems. They represent an important piece of infrastructure on campus. Whereas I formerly only heard the alarm siren, I now hear crystal-clear announcements about what is going on and what to do. I wonder what will happen to these systems as the need to address a wide array of potential emergencies becomes more pressing.

Kempton's discussion of folk theories of home heating gives me the chance to show my age and make a reference to
Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber,
a character played by Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live, who once said "You know, medicine is not an exact science,
but we are learning all the time. Why, just fifty years ago, they thought a disease like your daughter's was caused by
demonic possession or witchcraft. But nowadays we know that Isabelle is suffering from an imbalance of bodily humors, perhaps caused by a toad or a small dwarf living in her stomach."

Activity 3.5 deals with how we use mental models in everyday reasoning. One part deals with increasing the temperature in order to cook food quicker. Not too surprisingly, I found some thoughtful discussion of this misconception.
The other part of the activity deals with what happens when you turn up the heat on a thermostat: if a house in winter is too cold, do you turn up the thermostat as high as it will go, or do you set it at the desired temperature? Kempton describes the valve and feedback theories of thermostat operation. Neither is completely accurate, but the feedback theory is closer to the actual operation of the thermostat. Interestingly, from the perspective of conservation and reducing consumption, the valve theory more readily explained the benefits of lowering the temperature setting at night.

Yet, 2011 is 25 years removed from 1986. Furthermore, the data upon which Kempton based his work is from 1976 (more than 35 years ago).
In my house, I have a high-efficency furnace with a modulating gas valve: the value theory makes a comeback!
Yet, these high-efficiency forced-air home heating systems are not installed everywhere.
I found, through google scholar, a recent paper that cited Kempton.
In the Applied Ergonomics journal,
Revell and Stanton (2013, in press)
look for examples of feedback, valve but also timer (set thermostat higher for longer operation) and switch (thermostat is merely an on/off switch) theories in the UK.
Rogers et al.
seem to promote the switch theory ("thermostats ... instead function based on the principle of an on-off switch").

Revell and Stanton talk about the importance of regarding the home heating system as a system instead of individual devices. More transparency related to the operation of the home heating system could allow residents to relate their actions to their goals and to understand when those cannot be met by the home heating system. This, in turn, could reduce consumption and enhance comfort.

There are plenty of opportunities for design here. Solutions must also acknowledge the difficulties and expense of upgrading these home systems and provide support to people using the heating systems that they have in place.

Last month, +Tim Maciag told me about Ken Bain's book entitled "What the Best College Teachers Do". I eagerly read it in preparation for the current semester, and it has provided a lot of food for thought. I learned that the best teachers try to create a "natural critical learning environment". I am buoyed by Bain's comments that good teaching can be learned and I am ready to take on this "serious and important intellectual and creative work."

Many years ago, I did a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test and found that I was an INFP (Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving) - and the same still holds.
This is not the dominant type amongst computer scientists.
Looking at Capretz's report on "Personality types in software engineering"
(published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies in 2002),
ISTJ (Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging) is most prevalent.
What this means is that I may often have a different perspective from that of my colleagues.
As I get older, I am more apt to embrace this difference.
In Bain's notion of the "promising syllabus",
I see a new opportunity to express my vision of a computer science course that is learner-centered.

There are three parts to the "promising syllabus" (so-named because it makes promises to the students):

promises or opportunities for students taking the class

what students would do to realize those promises

how instructor and students would "understand the nature and progress of learning"

I was most sure about the first part, the promises and opportunities, as I used a quote from J. C. R. Licklider's Man-Computer Symbiosis (1960) that had inspired me. I wrote to students that "we are now living in those most creative and exciting years in the
history of mankind and this class will help you to engage in them fully." In the promises, I touched on all six categories of
L. Dee Fink's categories of significant learning: foundational knowledge, application, integration, human dimension, caring, and learning how to learn.

As I moved onto the second part, what students would do to realize those promises, I was less certain but still enthusiastic.
I gave a tentative schedule of readings in the text and broadly how they related to the topics in the curriculum.
I am using quizzes in moodle to give students some direction in their preparation and some automated feedback.
Aside from preparing (by keeping up with the readings), I've also indicated participating (including involvement in design of assignment rubrics and exam questions), writing (blog posts), and designing (the focus of the course project).

Writing the third and final part, understanding the nature and progress of learning, was even more difficult.
I wrote about formative and summative evaluation - of interfaces and of students' learning and thinking in the class.
I included, from Bain, a submission at the end of the semester where students could reflect upon the nature and progress
of their own learning and thinking and outline their areas of strength and
weakness when it comes to the material.
I am least certain about that element, but time will tell!

This syllabus feels right to me. I am hopeful that my students and I will use it as the foundation for a great semester.